2:20 AM,
Jul. 10, 2013

Asiana Flight 214 after it crashed at the San Francisco International Airport. Patrick Smith, a pilot, points out in his column below that without diminishing the accident's seriousness, most of the passengers survived. Hence, 'This simply was not an air disaster of the scale that was once relatively common and is not deserving of terms like 'catastrophe.' '

Written by

Patrick Smith
| Slate

On Saturday afternoon an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 crash-landed at San Francisco International Airport, killing at least two passengers and injuring dozens more, many of them seriously. I've been an airline pilot since 1990, and I'd like to offer some perspective on this still-developing story. But before getting to the accident itself, I'd like to express my dismay over the media's shamelessly sensationalistic coverage of it. A certain degree of network hyperventilation always follows air crashes, but this time, from the absurd eyewitness accounts to the at times wildly inaccurate ...